Why does Winston Churchill feature in ‘Peaky Blinders’?
“Dear Mr Churchill, I have been approached by an agent of the Crown to carry out a task as yet unspecified. His name is Major Campbell, and I believe he reports to you.” So begins the correspondence of Peaky Blinders gang leader Tommy Shelby with Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and one of the great figures of modern British history. But why does this series about the criminal underworld of Birmingham involve such an important figure of the establishment?
Well, for one, there is some historical basis for Churchill’s involvement in attempts to foil the Peaky Blinders’ plan to leverage stolen guns to their advantage at the start of the series. During the period in which the events are set, Churchill was British Secretary of State for War.
He was obsessed with thwarting the war effort of both the Bolshevik Red Army in Russia and the Irish Republicans. He would really have been made aware if a large number of weapons had been stolen from a Birmingham factory and would have feared them being passed onto the Bolsheviks or the IRA.
It is more far-fetched that, while still War Secretary, Churchill would have ordered intelligence officer Major Campbell to hire Shelby as a hitman, as occurs in the second season of the series. However, because Churchill’s connection to Campbell and Shelby in the series has been established by that point, we, as the audience, go along with it.
Churchill, the anti-fascist?
What is most completely contrary to the context of the historical record is that Churchill would have contacted Shelby as he did in the fifth season. In the episode entitled ‘Mr Jones’, alluding to the Bob Dylan song performed by Richard Hawley in its soundtrack, Churchill and Shelby discuss their mutual concerns about the dangers of fascism. Churchill would have been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time and would have had much deeper concerns than personal dealings with Shelby.
More significantly, in the late 1920s, Churchill was openly expressing his admiration for fascism, stating to Italian reporters in reference to Mussolini: “If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been wholeheartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”
Churchill actually looked favourably upon Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, who also appears in the last two seasons of Peaky Blinders. He admired his demagogy and tried to recruit him to his own private political club early in their careers.
Only during the late 1930s, with Hitler’s expansionist German foreign policy, did Churchill’s persuasions change. He began to place the threat of fascism higher in his list of priorities than using it as a bulwark against communism much later than the series implies.
Tommy Shelby’s kindred spirit
Nonetheless, Peaky Blinders creator and writer Stephen Knight has described Churchill as a “useful” inspiration for his writing. Knight explained to The Observer in 2019, “He was around a lot of the issues that Peaky touches on, not the least of all is the rise of fascism.”
More than Churchill’s presence on the political landscape, though, Knight found him to be a helpful mirror to hold up to the character of Tommy Shelby, given certainly similarities between the two.
“He suffered greatly with depression, and he famously drank a bottle of brandy a day, and he smoked his cigars, and yet he always survived.” Shelby, meanwhile, consumes Irish whisky by the bottle and cigarettes by the pack. “I really liked that idea,” Knight concluded.
